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Lou Stoppard reports on the Versus show

by Lou Stoppard on 22 September 2012.

As soon as the first hot pink mini-dress hit the catwalk you just knew this was going to be a smash hit – the best we’ve seen at Versus in a while. Bold bright colours, short sporty shapes and playful love heart and polka dot prints made this a flawlessly frivolous collection, the perfect wardrobe for the Versace vixen’s sassy kid sister.

You’d never call the Versus girl restrained, but ironically that’s what she was for S/S 2013, thanks to designs that left her bound completely in rows and rows of chunky plastic chains. These colourful links – offered in block crayon primaries – were employed both as a print and embellishment, a playful twist on Gianni’s iconic chainmail dress.

As soon as the first hot pink mini-dress hit the catwalk you just knew this was going to be a smash hit – the best we’ve seen at Versus in a while. Its success was mainly due to a completely perfect balance of quintessentially Versace aesthetics and signature Christopher Kane tricks. For every archive Versace print or revived nineties knit there was a dose of CK. So a characteristically Vercase shaped dress came in the same nude that won Kane such praise after his A/W 2009 hit, and a sweet A-line skirt, coloured in that exact shade of yellow that Naomi Campbell worked so well, was constructed from shiny treated lace, harking back to Kane’s S/S 2011 show. This was cartoon dressing at it’s best. Bold bright colours, short sporty shapes and playful love heart and polka dot prints made this a flawlessly frivolous collection, the perfect wardrobe for the Versace vixen’s sassy kid sister. To up the fun stakes even more, Donatella had employed the ever-enthusiastic Beth Ditto to bop along in the background, all while booming out her greatest hits. The site of all the models busting some incredible moves at the end of the show was proof enough that these were feel good clothes, full of joy, ease and optimism.

As I slipped away Donatella herself had begun to grind down the dance-floor, wiggling alongside Ditto. Clothing aside, that vision brought me enough joy to last all season.